Silicon Beach: Journalists need to re-engage states Cogapp's Hadfield
Former Fleet Street journalist and director of strategic projects at Cogapp, Greg Hadfield, has said that Journalists have lost the trust of communities by “keeping their eyes shut and cutting costs.”
Speaking to The Drum at this week’s Silicon Beach conference, Hadfield stated that where journalists had now retreated to bunkers on the edge of towns and rarely engaged with their readership.
“In the past, journalists wanted to be at the centre of a networked community and meet the needs of those people within it,” he told The Drum.
“Many sit on the outskirts of towns and just engage in churnalism or write not-so-witty pun headlines and cannot be bothered to send young and bright journalists to local authority meetings to engage with those people in a position of democratic responsibility.”
He praised the number of bright young journalists that exist in the media industry, however he warned that it was the job of media owners to listen to their audiences and new employees in order to innovate, or risk missing out on future innovators.
“If you are part of the coming generation of digital innovators and social entrepreneurs and you ask yourself would you go to big traditional media, either at the beginning of your career, or mid-career, then the answer to that for me is quite likely not,” he explained.
Hadfield went on to identify 20 cities that he felt had the ability to use digital technologies to become globally-connected cities and explained that the newspaper could become a part of this.
“It’s not too late – at a city level there is a very bright future for local papers at the heart of coherent, cohesive communities, especially in cities with devolved powers that have a lot of control over shaping their own futures.”
Follow The Drum's live blog from Silicon Beach here.